I think that most Star Trek stories after TOS were unimaginative. Ironically the Motion Picture had the best storyline of all the films even if pacing was a bit ponderous. TNG had a few good episodes ("Loud as a Whisper", "Yesterday's Enterprise"). But most good plots were ground up and turned into cliché-by-committee sausage (the powerful plot of "But do I have a Soul?" turned into the execrable "Silicon Avatar", and... a Borg queen? Really?!?).

DS9 worked better because there was more room for friction in a world where people didn't get along all the time. The Enterprise series started out OK but soon turned into a post-9/11 jingo-ist "War on Terror in Space" fest. It could have done something better here, something meaningful that explored the world's reaction to terrorism after 9/11 and explored the origins, values and relationships on both sides by allegory. It could have been more mind-expanding than TOS. Instead it turned into drivel.